


At Athena's Feet

by farrah_yondale



Category: Castlevania (Cartoon), 悪魔城ドラキュラ | Castlevania Series
Genre: Child Death, Gen, dead bodies, done mostly to center on alucard and sypha's relationship but trevor shows up at the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-07 15:00:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14083497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/farrah_yondale/pseuds/farrah_yondale
Summary: Trevor gets left behind in his drinking habit while Adrian and Sypha check out Medusa heads harassing the town over.





	At Athena's Feet

Between clouds of blood-red, she sees him and sighs with relief. A small, dark figure, flapping webbed wings and growing larger, till she can see his form clearly. Sypha always feared when Adrian took off in his bat form. It was convenient, but it made him an easier target for the more superstitious.

Adrian glides down and lands on the dorsum of Sypha’s outstretched hand. He’s so small and warm, and Sypha has to resist the urge to lovingly stroke his head like a pet.

“To the west, about four miles from here.” Adrian’s mouth doesn’t move, but his voice comes out from somewhere. “There’s an entire city, turned to stone.”

Sypha’s heart leaps at the thought. “Another cyclops?”

“No. Medusa heads.”

The name rings familiar. Sypha digs deep into her mind’s eye, into a well of Speaker tradition that whispers stories beyond the constraints of time. Hissing, weeping songs as expansive as a library. _Medusa, vengeful spirits and serpents writhing, so endless in her hatred that it seeps into her severed hair, her children soulless, powerless except to turn whatever they touch to stone._

Vaguely, she recalls a myth from her childhood.

“Sypha?” Adrian asks. He edges up her hand, closer, as if to express his concern.

“Consulting the spirits,” Sypha answers curtly. “About Medusa. Tell me you know something, because my knowledge only extends so far. Most of my people have been killed in the process of researching her.”

“Vile, pestering. Medusa heads aren’t strong but when they come in swarms, they can frustrate the less patient. My vampire blood doesn’t afford me any resistance to their abilities, either. Nothing we can’t handle if we’re careful, however.”

At the mention of “careful” Sypha’s reminded of their missing companion.

“Where’s Trevor?”

Adrian hesitates. “In a...tavern.” He doesn’t say it directly, but Sypha knows what he means. Drinking.

She frowns.

“We can handle this on our own,” Adrian tries.

“Yes, but he should be here.”

“Be patient with him. A dependence on alcohol can’t be cured overnight.”

When Sypha doesn’t reply, he continues, interpreting her silence. “You expect better of him.”

“Yes,” she remarks. “But you have a point. Do you want to transform?”

Adrian burrows into her sleeve. “I like being a bat.”

Sypha says nothing at first, enamored by how adorable this whole situation is. Until she realizes he’s shivering uncontrollably against her hand and what Adrian’s real reason for keeping his bat form is.

“I didn’t know vampires could get cold,” she says, trying not to laugh.

“I’m half human,” he responds, and apparently assumes that her light-hearted chatter is permission for him to burrow deeper. “Which means I’ve inherited certain human weaknesses. The cold is one of them.”

Sypha digs her other hand into her sleeve and pulls him out. He lets out a small squeal in surprise, looks like he’s about to apologize or protest, till Sypha tucks him into her robes, in a pocket beside her breast where it’s decidedly warmer.

“Thank you.” His voice is muffled. “I was going to ask but I didn’t want to be rude.”

His shivering gently ceases over the course of their walk. Their only interaction between here and the next city over consists of Sypha occasionally pressing into her robes to make sure he’s still there. Adrian responds to each inspection with a small squeak.

The town over is hardly that. If Adrian hadn’t told her, she might have mistaken it for a pile of ancient ruins and walked past without another thought. There’s no indication at all that anything might live here, and only when Sypha reaches closer does she see the Medusa heads, floating around like sullen lanterns swaying on a river.

“Your heart is racing,” Adrian remarks once they reach the town’s edge.

“I don’t like the idea of being turned to stone again.”

“You have me,” and for some reason, this comforts her. But she says nothing in response.

Regardless of the assurance Adrian’s words provide her, Sypha still stays on guard. She approaches the streets from behind a pillar, hoping that it might conceal her presence till she’s close enough to do a proper inspection. Adrian’s head pops out from underneath her robes.

“Be careful. If they touch you, you’ll turn to stone.”

“I know.”

“It’ll wear off in a few seconds, but if Medusa catches you in that time…”

 _You’re dead_ , is what he means to finish with.

Sypha nods. Presses her back to the stone wall and peeks around the corner.

“Shit.” Medusa’s close. _So close,_ Sypha has to swallow the thrill in her heart as she turns back. In her short glance, she had seen her, not at all like how the Speaker myths spoke of her. Her traditions told a story of a cursed woman, not a monster. The creature in this town slithers along the cobblestone with a serpent’s body, eyes her collection of statues with a mask-like face and hisses incessantly when the snakes erupting from her head don’t. The only part of her that looks human are the arms erupting from her torso that hold a sword and shield.

Sypha feels a bead of sweat trail down her cheek.

She glances back to see where Medusa is, but…nothing.

“Sypha!” Adrian’s shout serves enough as a warning. Heavy steel drops down, hits the ground with a thud that shakes the earth, and Sypha manages to dodge at the last second, rolling with the momentum. It proves difficult in layers of robes, and Sypha has to drag herself to the other side of the pillar to avoid a laser to the face.

“So much for thinking this through,” she gasps. Medusa is relentless and doesn’t wait for her to catch her breath, doesn’t bother wasting time with a teasing comment. Sypha can see how she managed to turn an entire city into stone overnight.

Sypha turns the corner, throws her hands out, fingers pointed towards the sky and lets down a barrage of icicles. Medusa hisses and recoils back as some of them cut through her scales.

“Move!” And before Sypha can obey that command, a fist is in her collar and she’s hurled back behind the pillar, tripping and colliding into the ground. When she glances back, Adrian is a bat again, screeching and hovering over Medusa’s face. At least twice, her sword comes dangerously close to slicing him in half and Sypha has to silence the cry in her throat.

She waits, watches Adrian with her eyes, tries to find a space between his flitting bat form to support him with her magic, but between Medusa’s sword and snake-heads and Adrian’s tiny form trying to dodge everything, she fears hitting him instead of her intended target. Only when she brushes past a Medusa head with her sleeve and notice another beside him does she say anything at all.

“Adrian!” she tries to warn. But it’s too late. The Medusa head, silent as the shadows, brushes up against Adrian and turns him to stone. His body falls limp to the ground, and before Medusa can shatter him to dust, Sypha raises a wall of fire and catches him to her chest. Barely escapes the laser that makes it past her spell by rounding a corner.

Sypha presses Adrian’s frozen body close to her, careful not to chip off a part of his wing or ear. She tucks him back into her pocket.

 _Her shield, her shield_. A memory, a story? Her own thoughts? Sypha’s too panicked to sift through them and can’t really bring herself to care. The answer is there, and she’d rather do something about it before she’s in the same state as her companion.

But how? She could try the direct approach, but it would risk getting her killed. Unless she could provide some sort of distraction…

 _He’s frozen solid. He won’t be able to see you, little she-devil,_ a voice cackles. Sypha ignores the snide remark of whatever unnamed ancestor has decided to tease her today and inhales. She can feel bones in the ground, a few paces away from where Medusa slithers, extends her hand out and claws her fingers like she’s digging into the dirt. Bones rattling, sewing themselves together with magic, till finally she can feel some semblance of a human standing, a familiar.

Sypha peeks over the corner. Her wraith is doing its job. Medusa’s head is turned, eyeing the undead familiar like it’s real.

A set of quick hand motions and Sypha lurches forward, cutting the shield out of Medusa’s hand with a rain of ice. Medusa’s head jerks to face Sypha, but before she can unleash a swing of her sword, Sypha pulls up another wall of fire between them. Medusa plays her part perfectly, shooting a beam of light when she can’t break past Sypha’s wall. Sypha jumps to the shield, throwing it over her and prays that she hasn’t miscalculated.

When Medusa’s screech comes to a sudden halt, Sypha knows it’s worked. Medusa is turned to stone, by the force of her own laser directed back onto her.

Sypha lifts her arms and brings down a block of ice, shattering Medusa’s form into a collection of splintered stone. In the same time, she feels something soft and warm return to life over her chest. Adrian’s head pops out from under her robes.

He glances down at what remains of Medusa. “Well done.”

Sypha can’t help but glow with pride at the praise from her messiah. Too busy grinning to herself, she doesn’t notice the Medusa head brushing past her hand until Adrian shouts, “Watch out!”

Sypha flinches back, about to throw up her hands in a spell, only to hear a whip crack in the air. She watches as the Medusa head splits in half before her and falls to dust.

Sypha and Adrian glance behind them. Trevor is standing a few paces away looking sullen and—more importantly—sober.

“You left without me,” he says, giving them a wounded look. “I’m hurt.”

Sypha frowns. “You look sober, or did you just metabolize all that alcohol on your way here?”

“Who said anything about me drinking?”

“What else does one enter a tavern for?”

“Pleasant conversation.”

Pleasant conversation sounded oddly like it involved Trevor’s fist in someone’s face.

But before Sypha can cross-examine her companion, Adrian jumps from out of her clothes, shifting from bat to human, black wings giving way to a black cloak. She tries to watch the transition to find a clear turning point, but the transformation is seamless.

“I think I’ve overstayed my welcome in your robes,” he says, pulling disheveled hair out from under his cloak.

“You can huddle against me if you’re still cold,” Trevor offers.

“And smell like vomit and excrement for the next two days? I’d rather die.”

If Trevor’s offended by this, he says nothing of it. Adrian takes his silence as permission to turn on his heels and begin to look for survivors. Sypha moves to follow him, but finds Trevor’s hand on her shoulder keeping her back. She turns to face him.

“You did well,” he says. “I don’t know many Speakers who could take on Medusa by themselves.”

“I had Adrian’s help. But thanks.” His hand doesn’t leave her shoulder and she glances at the offending limb, expecting that to be enough of a message for him to let go. But he doesn’t, and the grave look over his face sends Sypha’s mind into a spiral of fear. _He knows, he knows,_ a panicked ancestor hisses in her mind. One of the worse ones offers to kill him. She waves them away.

“Did you see that?” she can’t help but ask, feeling her chest tighten.

“What, you mean the corpse of that old biddy coming back to life? That was you? I thought I was just that drunk.”

Sypha crosses her arms, her fear evaporating. “I thought you said you didn’t drink.”

“I didn’t, but I got you to relax, didn’t I?”

Sypha pouts at that and Trevor just laughs slightly. But it does set her at ease. If he felt lukewarm enough about the subject to joke about it, it meant he didn’t hate her for it at least.

“If anything, I’m impressed,” he admits. “I didn’t know there were Speakers who could practice necromancy.”

“Well, it’s taken less kindly than elemental magic, so I prefer not to speak of it or use it very often.”

At first, Sypha’s afraid she’s said something wrong. The look over Trevor’s face is grave and distant, and he says nothing. And then she realizes he’s looking past her at the hut Adrian just stumbled out of. He’s clutching his abdomen, facing away from the two of them.

Sypha and Trevor exchange glances and hurry forward to check on him.

“Adrian, are you all right?” Trevor asks.

Adrian answers his question by doubling over and vomiting on the side of the road.

“There’s a child…” he heaves, wiping a gloved hand over his mouth. “Starved to death.” As if the mere thought is enough induce nausea in him, he leans over again, and Sypha is quick to pull his hair back before he soils it with his stomach contents. With no food intake in the last day, however, the only thing he wretches up is acid and saliva. He spits.

Trevor and Sypha exchange another set of glances. Sypha makes no motion towards the cabin, choosing instead to rub a soothing hand over Adrian’s back. She’s seen far too many bodies, to the point where it hardly has an effect on her anymore, but she’d rather not add another to the already long list.

Trevor, brave soul that he is, glances inside. In an attempt to bury the child, perhaps? Sypha doesn’t remember him being all-too-particular about burying bodies, but she can’t think of another reason why, when the sight of a dead body isn’t something he wants to see either. He inhales sharply and turns back. Apparently, the sight is too gruesome for even him to stomach silently.

“I’ll do it,” Sypha says, laying Adrian’s hair down gently over his back. Trevor glances at her, brows furrowed in some attempt to warn her of what lays inside the hut, but she continues inside undeterred.

Sypha inhales at the stench. It burns her nose, causes tears to well up in her eyes. It’s so repulsive, Sypha has to hold her breath just to stomach the sight.

The gender of the child—not that it would have mattered to a Speaker, anyway—is indiscernible. All that remains is a stiff, swollen corpse covered in swarms of maggots.

“They’ve been dead for days,” Sypha dares say when Trevor walks in, at risk of the smell hitting her nose again.

“And here I thought no one could go out peacefully these days,” he replies. “It looks awful but if they really starved to death, they would have died like going to sleep. More than I can say for all the rest of the corpses around here with their faces ripped off. Sypha, don’t,” he warns as she starts forward. When she ignores him and leans over to touch the corpse, he physically holds her back. “I don’t want you to get sick.”

“It’s fine. I’ve done this before.”

The way she so nonchalantly puts it must have stirred something in Trevor, because he lets go. He says nothing at first and watches her dig a grave beside the child. The dirt feels relieving and cool on her fingers and for a brief moment, she can drown herself in that feeling and ignore the fact that there’s a starved child in front of her.

“How many bodies have you buried?” The question hangs in the air, even more dense than the smell of decay. Sypha doesn’t reply at first, continuing her grave digging in silence before finally responding.

“I don’t know. I’ve lost track.” There’s another beat of silence. “How many have you?”

“I didn’t have my family members’ bodies to bury.”

Sypha says nothing, afraid to pry in that direction in case it’s a sore subject. When she moves to pick up the body, Trevor helps her. He doesn’t seem too keen on getting maggots all over him, however and keeps the body away from his. Sypha, on the other hand, is used to them and doesn’t flinch when they crawl over her hands and robes, instead focusing on piling dirt over the child. She only dusts them off when they finish.

Outside, Adrian greets them with another bout of vomiting. It’s Trevor this time who pulls his hair back.

“How are you two…” Adrian begins, looking paler than usual. (Sypha didn’t think it possible.) “Not sick from just the smell?”

“We’re used to it,” Trevor answers curtly.

“Used to it?” Adrian repeats.

Sypha swears she detects a faint note of offense in his voice and responds, “We shouldn’t be, but we are.”

If anything, the statement only incites Adrian’s temper. “That doesn’t make it any better!” he hisses, turning suddenly. Sypha starts forward, about to open her mouth in protest, but Trevor tugs on her arm. Before she can argue with him, Adrian is already halfway across the street.

“Leave him. He needs time to sulk on his own.”

She stares off into the distance at Adrian’s form, watches him find the nearest abandoned building to shut himself in and slam the door behind him. She sighs. Only when she glances back at Trevor’s fist in her sleeve does he let go.

“Touchy-feely today, aren’t you?” she teases.

“You know me. Always keeping you two from doing something stupid. By physical force if necessary.”

“That would imply you’ve stopped me from doing anything today.”

“Don’t tell me you’re about to run off and baby your messiah.”

Sypha turns and waves her hand, ignoring him.

“Wait.” Trevor’s voice is so serious, she can’t help but stop at his request. Without warning, his digs his hand into her hair, and Sypha has half a mind to dodge and snap at him. “You have a maggot in your hair.”

When he pulls back and presents the proof to her, she rolls her eyes.

“What do you say?” he says. “It’d make a good evening snack, don’t you think?”

“And why don’t you go back in there and make a meal out of that child? I’m sure Adrian would be thrilled at the prospect."

**Author's Note:**

> I'm always concerned whether everyone is in-character, so please let me know in the comments below.


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